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Hyperloop One to shut down

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Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#151

Post by bombcar »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #78
renewiltord wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA HSR is going to spend $8b to connect 4th and King to the Transbay Terminal. That's 2 miles. At $4b/mi, the problem would be too much attention not too little https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/27/san-francisco-downtown-rai...

Well there is the plan to add a third runway to Heathrow. 1.5 miles of runway for $20B.

With these giant infrastructure projects the question really isn’t the cost, it’s the payback. I’m sure Heathrow will get their $20b in value back relative quickly.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#152

Post by thfuran »

trhway wrote: post #134
thechao wrote: post #12

There is a world where we dig tunnels under federal highways, and stick freight trucks down there. They'd run on a monorail, at 120+ mph. Surface vehicles would be dramatically limited in terms of height, width, and length. Maybe people buses could go down there? In my imagination these tunnels are, like, 200' down. Like mole people.

Why go underground (expensive 3rd dimension down) when we have the whole 3rd dimension up almost unused? The freight can be trucked by large Zeppelins for example (and electric at that with the most of the energy generated by the solar panels covering the upper surface of the Zeppelin https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38017937 ). The issues are pure engineering ones. These freight Zeppelins can be fully automated,…

A train car carries about a kiloton of cargo. How many zeppelins would that take?

Edit: Actually, I can't count. Only a few hundred thousand pounds. That's still probably a bunch of zeppelinworths though.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#154

Post by qsdf38100 »

Ekaros wrote: post #51
_ea1k wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to guess that he didn't expect it to work. He never invested significantly, and there must be a reason. The simplest reason seems to be that he expected it not to work, at least with current technology.

I always wondered just how bad an idea must have been. If Musk didn't go after it. Specially considering that he is the one who published it...

He did it to divert investment into high speed trains, which have the potential to significantly reduce the number of Teslas he could hope to sell.

He successfully made investors waste hundreds of millions into these hyperloop startups, which are like real life parody of high-tech scam startups.

On the other hand, one must be quite illiterate scientifically to buy into Musks grand sci-fi projects. Should only work on 5 years old. But you don’t have to believe, you just have to pretend and take these easy millions from rich but dumb VCs.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#155

Post by mplewis »

thechao wrote: post #12

There is a world where we dig tunnels under federal highways, and stick freight trucks down there. They'd run on a monorail, at 120+ mph. Surface vehicles would be dramatically limited in terms of height, width, and length. Maybe people buses could go down there? In my imagination these tunnels are, like, 200' down. Like mole people.

You have, once again, described an expensive and bad train.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#157

Post by alangibson »

mchusma wrote: post #57

I loved the hyperloop concept, but it felt like the company was too early. The real problem that needs to be solved first before this is viable is "cost effective tunnels". Only once you have those, does adding a vacuum and accelerating make sense. I think Musk believed this as well, which is why he floated the idea of Hyperloop (pun intended) but bankrolled the Boring Company. I think another 10 years of tunneling i…

The real problem is math. You will always be able to get more throughput with a slowish, long train than a fast, short Hyperloop car. It's latency vs bandwidth.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#158

Post by wardedVibe »

yigithan wrote: post #74
thechao wrote: post #12

There is a world where we dig tunnels under federal highways, and stick freight trucks down there. They'd run on a monorail, at 120+ mph. Surface vehicles would be dramatically limited in terms of height, width, and length. Maybe people buses could go down there? In my imagination these tunnels are, like, 200' down. Like mole people.

Right, they can even do this for within city delivery. Imagine each home having a tube box, like a mailbox, that is vertically connected to the network of tubes underground. Small electric vehicles running through the tubes and carrying parcel from warehouse hubs to homes and even vice versa. Amazon Instant Delivery!

funny that one of the better f u t u r e ideas in this thread got heavily downvoted. This is probably one of the more efficient ways to automate package delivery, up to a small-ish size, and requiring a pretty high density. If NY wasn't a clusterfuck when it comes to getting projects built, they might actually have the density to justify the maintenance costs.

> Small electric vehicles

why not just use pneumatics? It's a proven technology used in sufficiently large facilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#Contemporary_us...

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#159

Post by qsdf38100 »

melling wrote: post #145
vorticalbox wrote: post #7

Robert Goddard designed a vacuum train in the 1910s, why did Elon think it was going to work a century later?

Didn’t Musk come clean and say he was trying to stop the California HSR? He didn’t intend to build it.

Not even trying to hide his disgusting business tactics. Casually, openly admitting it was to waste hundred of millions of investments. And people are still going to defend him because, rockets, and cars from the future, and success! He’s like trump, he knows people will follow regardless of what he does.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#160

Post by jibe »

bombcar wrote: post #137
jibe wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

other companies had EVs out at the same time Who? And how did they mainstream EVs more than Tesla? Fisker was in the market early, but didn’t mainstream EVs. GM was in way early, but probably held the market back.

Honestly, Musk’s innovation with Tesla has nothing to do with the damn cars. He made sure they build a supercharging network to answer the main complaint. That worked.

That was important, maybe the most important. But bringing down the price was also key to mainstreaming, also making attractive cars. Eco cars tended be in the ugly for a cause style, like the Prius.
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